Japan’s LINE teams up with Gumi for game distribution while forming own $100M fund for developers

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Japanese messaging app company Line and gaming company Gumi held a press briefing in Tokyo earlier today, where LINE said it will invest thousands of millions of US dollars in game developer Gumi and take about a 10% stake in the latter company. At this timing, both companies have agreed that they LINE as well is forming jointly a 10 billion yen (about $100 million) fund focused on investing in Japanese game developers.

Update: Gumi is not involved in forming this fund. It will be called Line Game Global Gateway and managed by Line and its investment arm Line Ventures.

LINE has distributed gaming apps through their user base of over 400 million people worldwide. At the briefing, Jun Masuda, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at LINE, explained that the company plans to target the ‘midcore’ category rather than existing casual game titles since their users’ preference are diversified. In terms of this, he pointed out that Gumi is the best partner for the messaging platform company.

LINE recognized that Gumi is an outstanding developer showing good numbers in sustainable but rapid user acquisition in the US, Southeast Asian and Korean markets. Gumi’s CEO Hironao Kunimitsu says that he wants to start distributing gaming apps through the LINE distribution channel as soon as possible.